Are you Hungry ?

A reminder as to why we are sitting here this morning.

Welcome and good morning. Thank you for coming, thank you to the men on the table, and our song leader.

This morning, we are going to to review. Review, because at this time of the year, you might meet people that haven’t given themselves to Christ.

I am not going to tell you anything that you do not already know, but sometimes reminders can be useful and hopefully powerful things.

You already know…. What verse do we always use when talking about meeting together.

Hebrews 10:25 ESV

not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

What I would like to do is discuss this idea of not neglecting to meet together. I would like to look at this privilege we have been given, the ability to come before the throne of God and offer acceptable worship through the lens of “hunger”

What we seem to take for granted when approaching a verse like this, is all of the history that proceeds this verse. So this morning, let us look at the idea of meeting together with the same interpretive lens as our Hebrew writer.

In order to do that, we need to go back to the very beginning.

A Genesis Perspective

Many of us in here know that the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Jewish Torah) contain many, many fundamental truths about how to view ourselves, the world, and our purpose in it.

We also know that these first five books are attributed largely to one author, a man named Moses.

We think that Moses wrote this all important part of the Old Testament of mankind after the Exodus from Egypt, and during the time of the 40 years of wilderness wondering. This matters, because of what was fresh in the minds of Moses and newly fledgeling nation state of people, the sons of Israel.

They had just experienced, a God, The God, The God of their forefathers choosing them, out of all the people and tribes of the earth, and save them in the most unforgettable, powerful, and moving way imaginable. One-by-one plagues descended upon Egypt, the world power at the time, that where specifically chosen to move through the pantheon of Egyptian (lower case “g”) gods that these people, the Israelites, had been subjected to for more than 400 years.

With this background in mind, Moses, under divine guidance from The Spirit, set down to write the true origin story of mankind. Moses, pens Genesis chapters 1-2 to show these delivered people, and by extension us, how it was that this world came into being and are wholly dependent upon God.

What’s more, Moses followed the same divine pattern sit down in the plagues. We see that it was God for instance that called into being the sun, or the greater light for the day in Genesis 1:14. Showing definitively that the sun is not God or even a god.

1.) Mankind's Greatest Problem

After God creates us in His own image, He gives mankind our mission. Our purpose.

Genesis 1:28 ESV

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Be fruitful and multiply, be stewards over the earth. This is how Moses orients this desert wondering nation in the world, and by extension, this is still our calling today. This predates the covenants and the law.

Probably on the same page that you have open in your bible, we see a similar telling of the story in Genesis 2. However, this time we see a negative commandment and this plays a vital role in our story, and why we are sitting here this morning.

Genesis 2:15–17 ESV

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

The bible, is vital because it infallibly carries forward the utterance of God and shows us what it is that we are meant to do. The important thing to remember, is that no where else on this earth, does a book perfectly explain why you are here and who we are meant to serve. If we are not actively seeking to do these things, if we are turning our gaze to the creation rather than the creator than we will never be satisfied.

However, it does not take long before the average person, born here and now, begins to look around and notice that something is wrong with our world. So, what happened? How do we get from everything being created ‘very good’ in the eyes of God in the first chapter of Genesis to here?

Moses, once again perfectly accounts for this in Genesis 3:6

Genesis 3:6 ESV

6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

There was and is a creature, let us not speak his name or dwell on him for to long together this morning, although he has a large part to play as to why we are here also, that put poison in Eve’s mind.

Here, we see that for the first time, since the beginning of the world, a human begins to entertain the idea of a world, of a path separate from the will of God. We see Eve begin to desire the creation rather than the creator. It is here that Eve tilts her gaze just a little and views the world in a different way, her own way.

Let me ask you a question: What changed about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? What changed about that tree between the Genesis chapters 1-2? Did the tree pick itself up and move into a more beautiful location, did the tree dress up in fancier clothes? No. What changed was the way that Eve began to view the world.

As a result, the first sin was committed and we as a species fell from our rightful place. From being in easy communion with our Heavenly Father.

From this point, we turned our appetites to what the world could offer. What was here and now and how could we fill ourselves up with that we could find on this planet instead of the food from above. It is right here in our history, that man began to starve.

2.) Longing for a Savior (the hunger)

Hunger is such a unique and universal experience for people from the west. Decades of food security in the west have all but driven this idea of mass starvation from our minds. However, for the vast majority of human history, most of our efforts for work have been so we could get the next mouthful of food to eat. How lucky few who find ourselves born in this time and place are part of a select minority that have to constantly remind ourselves to stop eating, not to eat so much.

The first super market opened 100 years ago- Premier Piggly Wiggly in Memphis, TN. Now we have more than 63,000 super markets in America. At the same time, the exercise/weight loss industries market share has grown into the 10’s of billions of dollars annually.

One of the latest trends is to assign each food a satiation score (satiety score). Foods with a higher number mean that each bite fills you up more, so you eat less of that food.

Broccoli- 89

Shrimp-83

Chicken Breast- 77

Raspberries-53

Boiled Potatoes-42

Ice Cream-12

Doritos- 2

Oreo’s-0

God has made us, so that we are incomplete unless we are feeding upon Him. What are we eating? What are we filling ourselves up with? Because we have to eat, and this is true physically, as well as spiritually so what is it that we are eating?

From Genesis Chapter 3 until Genesis Chapter 12 a period of time is covered that is longer in time than all the rest of the bible combined. During this time you see the patriarchal period begin and the spreading out of all peoples of the world. Then each civilization, each society, begins in earnest to try and reach for heaven by various means of sacrifice, even to the point of sacrificing their own children. It doesn’t work.

We see such a perfect representation of this time in our history in Genesis 25:27-34 The story of Jacob and Esau. My family, at the end of the day, if we trade in our birthright as sons and daughters of God then all that we will be left holding, is a bowl of red beans.

Genesis 25:27–34 ESV

27 When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents. 28 Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob. 29 Once when Jacob was cooking stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was exhausted. 30 And Esau said to Jacob, “Let me eat some of that red stew, for I am exhausted!” (Therefore his name was called Edom.) 31 Jacob said, “Sell me your birthright now.” 32 Esau said, “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” 33 Jacob said, “Swear to me now.” So he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.

The same thing takes place, as our inspired author moves the story from an individual, to a family, to an entire nation state. After the Exodus, two months after!!!, we see the people of Isreal groaning to go back to the world, to feed at the fleshpots of Egypt. Exodus 16:2-3

Exodus 16:2–3 ESV

2 And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, 3 and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

It has been said, that the rest of the Old Testament is nothing more and nothing less than commentary on the people of Israel failing to uphold the commandments of God. Sometimes, for a brief period, repentance, than the food from heaven would sustain the people. However, this is always followed by a period of famine, of starvation, of death.

The Old Testament, the Law, ends with the hope that one day, a man, a king, a person of anointing would raise up and restore Israel to a place of communion with God. I think that Isaiah 25:6-9

Isaiah 25:6–9 ESV

6 On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. 7 And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. 8 He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. 9 It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

3.) The Bread of Heaven

Now my family, and finally, we come to “IT”. The reason why we are here this morning, and the reason to rejoice in any season. The feast, the very thing that people have been waiting on for 1,500 years. At the very beginning of the new testament in our bibles, the very first of the four gospel accounts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the Gospel According to Matthew, is a section that lasts from Verse 2 until 16. In these 15 verses, Matthew, writing to a Jewish Audience sets in stone a new Genesis, a new beginning. After all, the word for Genealogy is the same root word as Genesis. Notice the pattern in Genesis 5:1

Genesis 5:1 ESV

1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.

Then off we go naming the offspring of Adam. This is Matthew setting up his Gospel account to be viewed by Christians in the same way that the Jewish people viewed their Torah. This is now supposed to be the new Torah for those who have become sons and daughters of God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

As we move into this story, this history, we come to the birth of Christ and from the very beginning we see the idea of “food” highlighted.

Luke 2:7 ESV

7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

I had in my mind all these years that the word “manger” was a cute near/middle eastern baby crib. Have you ever looked up the word “manger” in a biblical dictionary? I did. I liked the Lexham Dictionary, it says…

The Lexham Bible Dictionary Manger

A feeding trough or feeding bin for animals, especially livestock. The word is found in Isa 1:3; Luke 2:7, 12, 16; 13:15.

Can you imagine, the Word, the Logo’s of the universe born, and placed in a feeding trough for lowly domesticated farm animals?

This event is the climatic event of history, proof? Even in this post-modernist world, even as secular as we are in the west, what year is it? 2,204 years from what?

This idea of food, of filling yourself up, of feeding on the correct things continues to be at the center of our Blessed Lord’s ministry.

Luke 4:3–4 ESV

3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” 4 And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’ ”

Our Lord’s perfect response shows us that their is more that is needed for man to be whole than a full belly. Satan, the one who put this poisonous vision of a world created by man instead of God into the mind of Eve, here fails to tempt this New Adam into seeing the world in a warped way, a fractured way.

He then climbs a mountain, exactly as Moses did when Moses received the Law from God, Christ now, at the beginning of His public ministry climbs a mountain an proclaims…

Matthew 5:6 ESV

6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

He teaches his first prayer to his faithful disciples and tell them to say to God in Heaven…

Matthew 6:11 ESV

11 Give us this day our daily bread,

This theme continues with our Lord.. Speaking to people that the religious elite would not be caught dead with he tells the woman at the well that He is the Messiah, the one who gives the Spirit, a wellspring of fresh perfect water, he tells his disciples after this somewhat excitable lady runs off…

John 4:31–34 ESV

31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.

We see this theme even affecting the people whom he preforms miracles on…

Mark 5:41–43 ESV

41 Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” 42 And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. 43 And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

This culminates in John 6. After the feeding of the 5,000, after walking on water, people come to Him for a food that will continue to fill them up, for the true bread from heaven that the leaven in the wilderness was only a shadow of and he tells them…

John 6:33–35 ESV

33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” 35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

Then he lays this divine plan on the table, He tells his closest followers, that the true food, the food that you lost in the garden, the food that you have fought all of the wars for, the food that you have cried all of your tears for, that food is finally here.

Then, within 24 hours, the Son of Man, who was and is and is to come, the true bread of life, is lifted up for the entire world. Hung on a tree. The perfect fruit. The new tree of eternal life.

Conclusion….?

That’s why we are here this morning. Because we are hungry. That is why we do not forsake the assembly of the saints because we have found where the food is!

Are you hungry? Then let us show you where the food is?

Are you full? Then it is your calling to go out into this starving world and tell people that you have found where the food is!!!